The most shocking thing to Survivor fans isn't that Denise Stapley, a 41-year-old sex therapist from Iowa, took home the $1 million prize during last night's finale. No, the most shocking thing is that she had no idea who Blair from The Facts of Life was. The way it came across on the show, only two players, returning tribesmen Michael Skupin and Jonathan Penner, figured out that fellow player Lisa Whelchel was a former teen star. But, guess what, Denise knew all along!
"I knew who she was from the minute I saw her," Stapley says. "Come on, Family Ties, Facts of Life, I loved that stuff! I knew who she was from day one. I talked to her about it during the mud ball challenge when she was pinning me in the mud for hours. I asked if everyone knew who she was and she said no and she wanted to play as long as she could as Lisa. I was thinking strategically that I might need her down the line and for me to out her would ruin that. When I got to Kalabaw I outed her to Penner. He thought he knew her from somewhere or recognized her and then it was confirmed for him."
Thank god, because we were all starting to think that Denise was totally crazy. But it wasn't nuts that she got herself all the way to the big prize. And what is she going to do with all of that money? "We're going to take several deep breaths," she says, adding that she'll talk it over with her husband. "We have a 9-year-old and some future planning for her to finish. We're not going to blow it. We're going to take a breath and we want to be good stewards of this incredible gift that Survivor literally handed to us. But maybe a trip someplace warm out of the rain first."
The crazy thing about Denise is that she was in three different tribes and went to every single tribal council during the entire season and no one ever serious talked about sending her home. "I definitely got a handful of votes when it came to those tribals, but in those conversations there was always another target," she says. Denise says that her strategy was always to provide something for each tribe she was in but to do it without being intimidating. "Maybe my stature helped," she says. Yes, maybe Denise won because she was short? Stranger things have happened.
Part of what got her so far to the end was her alliance with golden boy Malcolm. She says when she told Lisa and her ally Michael Skupin that she thought they couldn't beat Malcolm, she wasn't lying. "At the time I didn't think they would win against him, so I had to use that in my strategy. But I had that real relationship with Lisa and Michael and I wanted to be sitting there. So I used that too. It was a combination of both." Though he was upset with her on the show, she says that she and Malcolm are now good friends.
Denise was definitely a memorable player and, it so happens, a woman. The show's host and executive producer, Jeff Probst, is on the record saying that there are more memorable male characters than female, and that is why the seven returning cast members brought back in the last three seasons have all been men. "I think there are lots of strong women who have been out there," Denise says. "I think Abi will be quite memorable. There have been lots of strong women who where great for a variety of reasons and hopefully they'll get some of them back in the game, since all the guys have been returning."
Speaking of bringing people back, if they were to cast another former teen star on the show, who does Denise think will stand a good chance? Punky Brewster, of course. "I think Soleil [Moon Frye] would do a great job. She would do fantastic." Well, a winner like Denise should know.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: CBS]
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I was a little sad when turning on the DVR last night to get to the Survivor: Philippines finale. It seemed like another foregone conclusion. Malcolm, who had been a power player all season (and heartthroblicious like a poster of Davy Jones ripped out of Tiger Beat magazine), made it to the final four so he for sure was going to take home the $1 million prize. Snoozeville. Luckily I was wrong and while the winner might not have exactly been a fan favorite, it was a satisfying end to a crazy season.
Congrats, Denise, you really earned it, but when the hour began I thought you had next to no chance to win. I think I underestimated her, which seems to be how Denise got her way to the $1 million check. When the hour started it seemed like Malcolm was a lock for immunity, would take himself, Denise, and either Lisa or Michael to the final, but it didn't matter. He played so well and was so likeable that he was going to get all the votes if he got himself on one of those uncomfortable looking log chairs at the end of the game. So it seemed, so it seemed.
Then there was a reward challenge, which isn't customary in this stage of the game, especially since Ford stopped sponsoring the thing and giving away a damn truck every year. But no, they were playing for something different. They were playing to spend a night cuddling with Malcolm under the stars and inhaling his scent and letting his hair fall limply over their naked skin. No wait, that's what I want to be playing for and what all of them have gotten for the better part of a month. They were playing for an advantage in the final immunity challenge. Very interesting.
Because it was a Survivor challenge they had to dodge a bunch of obstacles picking up puzzle pieces along the way and then solve a puzzle to win the advantage. Did they just not have a lot of staging area this year, because the challenges, as a whole, seemed pretty uninventive? Challenge, challenge, challenge; boring, boring, boring and Malcolm wins because of course. Malcolm wins everything. He gets the advantage. He has this in the bag. Snoozeville.
Back at camp, Denise says to Malcolm, "Hey, I'm a smart lady with eyes, so I know you're going to win. You're going to take me to the final three, right?" He says, "Ummm, ahhhh. Well. I. Uh. I guess. I'm so... I don't even know yet. I think that. Well, first I have to win and then, well, I don't know." Denise, being a smart lady with eyes, knows he is not going to take her, so she approaches Lisa and says, "Look, I am a smart lady with eyes so Malcolm is going to win this, but if he doesn't, we need to get rid of him. We really do. He's going to crush us." She agrees, they hug, they squeal, they jump up and down three times and it is just like recess in fourth grade.
Now it is time for the March of the Fallen Comrades. Where's the fast forward button? OK, the fallen comrades is now over. I hate the stupid fallen comrades as much as I hate that Survivor ends with a final three, but both of these things aren't going anywhere, so maybe I should stop bitching about them. I won't, but whatever. At least I know I have a problem.
At the challenge, everyone has to hold a little piece of wood with a ball balancing on it between two handles. Malcolm reveals that his advantage is that he gets to let the ball fall off once and then gets a second chance. OK, that is a huge advantage, and I think a rather unfair one. Did the producers know that Malcolm has a genetic condition known as Tremor Paws, where he can't hold his hands still for even one second? Did they create the advantage hoping that the fan favorite would win? If not, then providing an advantage like that to someone who has already won a physical challenge to achieve said advantage pretty much settles the game ahead of time. Now the person who is the strongest in a physical challenge is now the person who is doubly the strongest going into another physical challenge. That just makes the strong stronger. That doesn't seem logically correct. Why not find a way to get the weaker players an advantage, like when Abi bought hers at the Survivor auction (another thing I hate but might have to reevaluate)? That is the only way she won a challenge and that gave the whole episode a wonderful tension that strong people beating weak people will never get you. Remember, a good news story is always Man Bites Dog. A good news story is not Strong Man Wins Advantage with Strength Then Wins Strength Contest. That is just a dog chomping on your boring old leg all the live-long day.
For all my bitching, the advantage didn't work, and Malcolm is out of the challenge first. This was sort of like finding the missing scale on the belly of the dragon Smaug, because this very specific challenge was the one thing that managed to slay Malcolm. Skupin eventually wins which is, honestly, the worst case scenario.
The whole night Skupin has been going on about how he thinks he can beat Malcolm. In the final challenge that was true, but otherwise I wanted to chalk it up to some sort of psychological condition. He wants to think that, a decade after falling in the fire, he is still the strong young man he once was when he first played this game. I wanted to say that he has such an intense narcissism that of course he thinks that people would vote for him over Malcolm because, once upon a time, in the Australian Outback, he fell into a fire and burned his hands off. So, of course, after he wins, he gives us the old, "I have to take the best to the finale and I will still beat him." No, Skupin, you will not. This is a gift from God, that you have found the only activity that you can't beat Malcolm at. If you don't take this gift and vote him out, then you are a complete idiot. Later, at the reunion special, Skupin says that he thought he would win because he went through so much to get there that everyone feels like they deserve it. OK, I get that. Maybe he's not a champion narcissist after all. I know if I sat in the rain and the mud for a month listening to Abi whine and Blair waffle and Penner fart that I would think I should win too.
Onto tribal council and Blair is saying she is voting Malcolm out and Skupin may not be and I want there to be a tie and a fire making competition and something totally awesome to happen. The only awesome thing is that Blair told Malcolm, to his face, that he was going home. A tribal council without Blair being honest next season is going to seem boring, boring, boring. So, yeah, Malcolm goes home and finally the master is dead. Oh, come here Malcy, let me comfort you with my warm bosom and some kind words while I stroke your hair and feel your warm breath on my body. There, there. Malcolm. There, there. Momma's here.
OK, back to camp where the final three burn everything down (really, why do they insist on setting everything on fire every year at the foot of the jungle when there looks like there is no one there to attend to it?) and now back to the final tribal council. This is becoming another thing that I hate. When the show first started it was a time for everyone to get up, ask the two remaining players a question and then sit back down. Occasionally there would be someone to try to imitate Sue Hawk's legendary "rats and snakes" speech and they would always fail. Now it's not even questions anymore. It's just gripes and score settling. It's just a bunch of people being sour that they lost and that is actually quite boring and serves no real purpose to picking a winner. The finalists no longer get to defend what they did or make a case, they mostly have to sit there and listen to griping. Artis make a whole speech that says, "I don't know about you guys, but I stayed true to my alliances so you suck." Yeah, Artis, good for you. That is why you are in the jury and these people are not. You may think you're all high and mighty, but you're really a loser. Quite literally, you are a loser.
Then Abi gets up wearing the worst dress that has ever been designed and is her usual charming self, but this time with a ruffle of doom going down her entire body. I thought she was last, but then I forgot about one person: Penner. Of course Probst kept Jonathan Penner, his bosom buddy and lifetime companion, to go last. Penner goes from one person to the next and tells them how awful they are. They are almost as bad as the toupee that he was wearing at the reunion special (Hair plugs? A dye job? Weave? It was definitely some sort of hair system. But what?) Finally he gets to Blair and does the meanest thing imaginable. "Blair, do you want to tell them, or should I?" he asks. She says, "I'll tell them. I'm not afraid." But clearly he wants to tell them. He wants to tell them all that Blair is Blair and that she used to be famous on a famous TV show and that she knows George Clooney. They all register shock and dismay (though, according to my chat with Denise today, she already knew about Blair and she doesn't know what the face she made was meant to register). "George Clooney used to do sitcoms?" they all think. Yes, girl! He did.
Blair handles it in stride. "Do you want to talk about what you did as a teenager? Did you tell everyone about that? No, you didn't. And I'm trying to play the game now as me." I felt really bad for Blair. All she wanted was to escape the fame and just be a normal person who was on equal footing with a bunch of other normal people and succeed by her own merits. And she had. She finally proved something to herself – that she could do it. She could be successful again. The world wasn't out to get her. Her best days had not passed. She didn't owe anything to a TV show that most people had already forgotten about and the younger kids didn't even know. She was Blair, but she was her own Blair. She was, dare I say it, Lisa! And Penner took that away from her. That was a low freaking blow.
Alright, so at this point, I think that everyone has a decent shot. Lisa should have argued more about the decisions she made in the game and how she was really driving the strategy in a big way. Like the way she played the game, her defense was a bit too willy nilly. I think if she was more concise, she could have won. Again, she wasn't really given the chance since no one even asked her a question, but whatever. Skupin just kept saying he outwitted, outplayed, and outlasted everyone. Yeah, buddy, so did these other two broads. You gave us no reason to vote for you. Well, apparently Carter thought differently, but, then again, Carter doesn't think too much. Even at the reunion he looked like his body was there but his eyes were about a million miles away in some fantasy land where he is king and fairies are dripping honey all over his body and a million Nyan cats were licking it off. He also doesn't know how to spell Skoopin.
Denise, of course, has the best case. She was at every single tribal council this season and no one ever really considered voting her out. When you hear that fact, it's hard not to award her the money. I thought she would be seen as weak for riding on Malcolm's coat tails, but without him in the finals she looked stronger than ever. When she said that she had been on three tribes, fitting into all of them, working hard to stay out of the way while orchestrating to get others voted out, you had to applaud her. Yes, it makes total sense that Denise won given the final three. Congratulations to her.
Now, I'm already picking Malcolmn to win the upcoming "Fans vs. Favorites 2: The Revenge," considering Probst asking him if he'd play again at the reunion was essentially him being recast on the spot. Malcolm is going to win this yet.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: CBS]
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Blair, the incorrigible heroine of this season of Survivor, keeps saying that she is really bad at playing this game. This is both true and false. The way we see it, she's kind of like Mommie Dearest — she is so bad at playing that she is amazing. She can't be just plain awful at it, because she's still in the game... unlike three-time veteran Jonathan Penner, whose ousting she could have prevented last night but did not. She brought all the crazy this episode because, as Penner said before he whistled on the win all the way to obscurity, "Blair once again lost her mind."
Here's the thing about Blair, she's the kind of girl who goes out with every guy who asks her because she wants to make everyone happy. But then when she hates the guy she's dating she finds a new guy and says, "I can't dump my boyfriend, you have to make my boyfriend hate me so that he'll dump me and then I can go out with you." Yes, this is how she swaps alliances, which she has done twice. She gave her word to Pete, Abi, Artis, and all those jerks and then when she didn't like them, she still voted with them while Malcolm, Denise, and Skupin begged for her to be with them. When she finally switched, she decided that she didn't trust Malcolm and Denise anymore, that she trusted Penner, but that she wouldn't keep him in the game, because she gave her word. Blair, it's your alliance. If you don't like it, then get the hell out of it. But she goes on building a new alliance week to week, somehow making sure that she's the one causing the drama even if she's not the target of it. It's a brilliant strategy, even though I don't think it's really a strategy, unless her whole "this game is bigger than me" shtick is just a line of crap and not how she truly feels.
Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. This episode was really supposed to be about Abi, a case of whooping cough that just won't go away. Everyone was so mean to her at the last tribal council and she was so bent out of shape. Whaaa-whaaa whoop whoop whaa. God, I hate Abi. Anyway, after she wipes the boogers from her nose, everyone goes to this week's reward challenge, the Survivor Auction. I hate the Survivor Auction. It is my least favorite of all the annual challenges because it is always the same, it's not that dramatic, and, well, I find it to be boring and stupid. Here I am whining about it. I'm as bad as Abi. If only my stomach were as flat.
Abi is sitting there, not bidding, while Denise spends all her money on a pancake breakfast and Skupin cashes out on a wine and cheese plate even though he doesn't drink wine (I think all his injuries have damaged his brain). Probst, always leading the witness, asks Abi why she's not bidding. "I'm going home soon, so I know I'll eat then," she says. Please. We all know what she is doing. There is going to be an advantage in the immunity challenge for sale, and she is going to buy it. It comes up and she does. The auction ends with Carter buying some veal shanks that the whole tribe gets to eat for 60 seconds and it ends with these reality hyenas ripping meat off the bone like a pack of animals and it makes me want to become a vegetarian. Sorry, Morrissey, "Meat is Murder" failed, but Survivor was triumphant.
So, Abi goes back to camp and fights with Penner (it was boring) and then slinks off to read her advantage and finds out she gets to skip right to the final round of the immunity challenge, which is what the advantage has been for the past several years. She decides she is going to use the oldest trick in the book and make a fake immunity idol. Oh please. That is going to work as well as Abi around camp all season, which is to say it's not going to work at all. I mean, this trick never works. Not even when Eliza played a stick with a face on it at tribal council and Probst threw it in the fire. They keep talking and talking and talking about how Abi has an advantage and that means she is surely going to win immunity.
We go to the challenge and Abi makes a big stink about there being two parts to her advantage, but she only has to read one part and then she rips the paper up into tiny little pieces and scatters them to the wind. Girl, you are overselling your ruse here. You need to keep it on the sly if you want anyone to believe it. Also, no one is going to believe this. It's the "you're attached to a rope and have to go through obstacles" challenge. There are three phases and at each stage the contestants have to answer a question and if they get it wrong they have to carry more weight through the course. Carter, who has been pronounced legally mute and brain dead, does not get one question right. And it doesn't matter because Abi wins anyway in a move that seems to be predestined.
Back at camp is when Blair totally loses her mind. The short of it is Blair's alliance told her to vote for Penner, but she likes him so she tells Penner that everyone is going to vote for him and she wants him to stay but she won't change her vote so he has to find some other people to change their votes. Does she realize how insane this sounds? Since Malcolm my lover, Denise, and Blair are voting for Penner and Penner, Carter, and Abi are voting for Denise, then Penner only has one hope: Skupin. He has to convince Skupin to switch sides. This is the second time Blair has done this to Skupin, her closest ally in the game. "I can't get my hands bloody by going against my word, but Mike will and will make everyone hate him, so go talk to him and if you can convince him, then I can get my way, I can seem loyal, and I get everything I wanted without doing anything." Like I said above, it's either incredibly stupid or stupid like a fox.
They go to tribal council and Penner makes a persuasive argument for Blair and Skupin to vote for Denise, because she and Malcolm will totally beat them in the final. I believe that he is right. But it doesn't work, and Probst's butt buddy Jonathan Penner, who has been allowed to play the game three times is finally voted out. At least he did it by announcing he was voting for Denise from the voting station and whistling on his way out. At least there was that. At least he earned Probst's admiration and made a little bit of good TV. And now that he's gone, we can focus all our energy on getting rid of the infected hangnail that is Abi.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: CBS]
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Yes, last night was about Blair crying. It was about Blair crying because people don't think she's pretty anymore, because people think she isn't loyal, because Malcolm won't love her the way she deserves to be loved, because Abi is really freaking mean to her. Whhaaaaa. That's what Blair said. She just sat there in the ocean in her sneakers (which is disgusting and no one wants to walk around in soggy trainers) and let people be mean to her.
So, after a reward challenge that dealt with balls and an immunity challenge that dealt with balls (Skupin won, possibly aided by the alien creature that appears to be growing on his shoulder) Blair didn't have any balls to go against her original alliance that treated her like crap since the beginning of the game to go with the nice people and Jonathan Penner, who would get her to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden if she gave him the chance. Yes, no balls at all. But Skupin did and got with the old Team Lesbian members and ousted Artis, a silent but venegeful god on Team Evil. Now if we can only get rid of Abi and her awful stink face and irrational temper and all will be quiet on the western front.
Yes, Blair is a big crybaby and so am I and currently I am pissed that I didn't save my original Survivor recap and all my jokes about balls and Blair and Abi and my Malcolm slash fiction are lost for the ages. I know I should save more. I know I should back up. It's my fault, really. My punishment is two days of sitting in the ocean in my sneakers. I hope it doesn't give me West Nile Virus (it will not). I'll make it up to you next week, I swear.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: AP Photo]
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I'm just going to come right out and admit it: I have absolutely no freaking clue what happened on Survivor last night. Well, I know who won the challenges, who has immunity idols, who everyone thinks is evil, how many pairs of jeans Blair has (one), how many times I fell in love with Malcolm as he inadvertently flexed his abs at the camera (a trillion), and I know who went home but I am still not quite sure why he did. Yeah, last night's episode was absolutely nuts and it was awesome. This is why we watch Survivor people, and it's always at its best when anything can happen and everyone's in so much jeopardy that it's like 7 PM and Alex Trebek just said hi.
Everything started when Penner returned to camp after narrowly avoiding eviction with his hidden immunity idol. Now, if I was Jonathan Penner, the conversation would have gone like this: "What the flaming F)*@*()!$@ you guys? Aren't you supposed to be on my F)(%&amp;!_#* team? Do you really thing these other F%&amp;!*)($ people are going to keep you around and take you to the end? No. I was. I F*(%&amp;@!*#&amp; was and I came up with a whole plan and we had the F*$&amp;!) numbers and all you had to do was vote with me, but noooooooooooo. FO!*%&amp;$)! Jeff is so insecure in his manhood that he had to F&amp;(*!&amp;@%# get rid of me at the first chance he could get. Well, F*$ you, Jeff. F$%()@&amp;*% you deep in your F!$*(&amp; face." But that is not what Penner did. "No, what you did makes total sense, I get it. I understand you were right," he says. Everyone knows he was pissed, but he contains it. I give him credit for this, because screaming wasn't going to do anything but piss people off and give them another reason to kick him off, but I bet it would have felt really good.
Quickly everyone is off to the reward challenge, where they are divide into two teams and then swim out to get some puzzle pieces and then come back and put the puzzle together. Yes, it was basically every Survivor challenge in the history of Survivor. There was some digging though, so I got to see my man lover Malcolm getting down and dirty. Really dirty. I mean, it probably took him days to get all of that sand out of his crack. Oh, Malcolm, here, let me help you scrub down your back. Doesn't that feel good? Yeah, I bet it does. Wanna know what they're playing for? A cruise on a boat while they eat a bunch of BBQ food and corn bread and apple pie and other American cliches. Remember when the challenges were always like "Go off into the native village and eat what they eat," and we got to learn a bit about indiginous cultures and it was really interesting in an It's a Small World After All kinda way? Yeah, they don't do that any more. Now it's like, "Here is a Happy Meal from the Manila McDonald's. Chew on that, you fat American jerks."
Challenge, challenge, challenge; boring, boring, boring, and Penner, Blair, Denise, Malcolm (swoooooon), and Jeff go off on the Colonial Food River Tour Brought to You By Three Hour Tours, Crash Free Since That Gilligan Incident. Basically the only thing we learn on this is that Jeff looks like an ugly hog when he eats. Oh, that and that the "evil people" are Abi, Pete, and Artis and everyone is all afraid of them and think that they're mean and awful. Penner wants to exploit this because he knows that they all want to vote for him and send him home.
But this gives our beautiful Jesus-loving, gay-hating Blair an idea. She is no longer just along for the ride in this game, she wants to win, so Blair is thinking way past The Facts of Life and to the finish line. How does she get the $1 smackeroonies? By selling bread at Mrs. Garrett's bakery? No! By bringing people to the end who are awful. She tells Skupin that they need to get together with Abi, Pete, and Artis (a silent but vengeful god) and they need to get rid of Malcolm because he has the hidden immunity idol. Well, that is after they vote out Penner this week, which is an inevitability at this point. That is, well, that is a pretty good plan. I'm so glad Blair has finally come to life and is thinking about the end.
At the immunity challenge everyone has to jump over hurdles, limbo under sticks, unknot a bunch of bags containing puzzle pieces, and then cross the finish line. The first three over the line go on to the next stage, where they have to put their puzzle together. Somehow Penner gets himself across the finish line right before Skupin and goes up against Jeff and Pete for the immunity necklace.
Now is the part of the recap where I bitch about Jeff Probst. Jeff Probst loves Jonathan Penner more than itchy prostitutes love Vagisil. He just has a giant man-boner for this guy (which is why he's one of a handful to be brought back three times) and he will do anything to keep him in this game. At the beginning of the puzzle doing he said, "This could be a million dollar puzzle for one of you." Basically it was him saying, "Pssst, Penner. I love you. Do you want to get married? Well, if you don't want to get kicked off, you better win this freaking challenge because you're toast." Now, I'm not saying the challenge is rigged, but Penner won. He came back from behind twice and won the damn challenge. A man who has never once in his three times on the show won a challenge suddenly wins in the clutch. Yes, this makes for good television, but there was something about it that I just didn't buy. Was Probst telepathically giving him the answers to the puzzle or something?
Penner wins and absolute chaos ensues. I'm not even sure how to break it down. Everyone is scrambling and there are all these alliances old and new and it's sort of like watching a game of Musical Chairs except everyone is already sitting in the sand and CBS couldn't get the rights to any music, so it's just "Non-Musical No-Chairs" and someone is going home at the end.
Alright, so Blair goes to Pete and is like, "We need to get rid of Malcolm. He has the hidden immunity idol and he's a threat." Pete, like everyone else, doesn't want to listen to Blair. He goes to Malcolm and asks about the idol and Malcolm lies to his face and says he doesn't have it and that Blair is lying. Everyone believes Pete and Malcolm that Blair is lying.
Now that they can't oust Penner, the plan turns to kicking out Skupin, but somehow Blair (or maybe someone else, I don't know, I'm dizzier than a kid playing Pinata at this point) says they should save Skupin because they might need his vote later on. Instead, they should get rid of Jeff. See, Jeff, this is why you should have stuck with your original crew and drafted Skupin and RC. The last one an alliance is the first one out!
But then Malcolm starts worrying about his place in the tribe because everyone is talking about his idol and he gets a crew of six together to kick out Pete, which is a brilliant strategy because Pete is mean and a physical threat and without him Abi and Artis won't know what to do with themselves except stare at the ocean and get irrationally mad at things. As they're picking up their torches, Malcolmn gets Denise, Jeff, Carter, Penner, and Skupin into a new makeshift alliance.
This is usually my favorite part of any season, where the tribes crumble and some shifting occurs and everything gets frantic and unpredictable. If a player can wind up on top after this initial shuffle, usually she's good until only her alliance is left and then it's really every woman for herself. That is if the alliance that is made can calcify into something strong. This time, it was so intense that it didn't even end at camp, it continued on into tribal council. And any alliance seem so slip-shod that we're going to have to go through more Jerrymandering again next week (yes!).
I'm just going to say it: I usually think tribal council is boring. Everyone has already made up their minds who they're voting for and everyone just gives vague answers to Probst's leading questions. But last night. Oof! That was a hum-diggity-dinger.
We start with Blair, who is now like a serious power player, and she just comes right out and says, "We were going to vote out Penner, but then we were going to vote out Skupin, but he's too good an ally so now I want to kick out Malcolm because he's a threat and has a hidden immunity idol." "Does he have one?" Probst asks. "Well, I know there's been some gossip about it, so...yup," and he shows off the idol, which is the balliest move I have ever seen at tribal council. OK, give me a minute, I need to save the thought of Malcolm's balls. Then Probst asks, "Anyone else got one?" "Yup, I do," Abi says, holding hers up. So, all of that is out in the open now. That is good because Malcolm has an advantage now that everyone knows they have to vote him out twice to get rid of him. But it's also bad because he lied to just about everyone when he said he didn't have it.
Now there seem to be two different plans at tribal. Penner says, "I have six people and if they do the right thing, then this should all work." He means the Malcolm Six (which is usually used to refer to his abs, but not tonight) who want to kick out Pete. Then Blair says, "Well, I have an alliance too and they should stick to Plan B and everything will work out fine." She's talking about her, Skupin, Abi, Artis, and Pete kicking out Jeff. So, we have no clue what is going to happen. Who exactly are these alliances? Why Jeff? Does Penner think his six can really hold? Where the hell did Jeff get get a toothpick in the middle of the jungle to chew on? After all this drama about people wanting to kick him out and saying he was for sure going to play his idol, why didn't Malcolm play it? Are his balls really that big? Mmmmmm. Balls. I mean – So many questions!
Probst reads the votes and Jeff gets sent home. Say what? This was one of those nights where I had to watch the credits to see how everyone voted. Here's how it broke down. Artis, Skupin, Pete, Abi, and Lisa all voted for Jeff. Yes, Lisa's evil alliance actually worked. Malcolm only got four of the six votes needed with the old Team Lesbian (Jeff, Denise, and Carter) at his side. And Penner? Well, he voted for Abi. Why the hell did Penner vote for Abi, especially after his impassioned plea for the six to kick out Pete? Was he playing a double agent? Did he know that there was going to be a tie and, rather than vote Jeff off directly and injure himself with his old alliance, did he throw his vote away so that the other five could get blood on their hands? Was this his way to betray Jeff as Jeff betrayed him the week before? That's sort of what I'm thinking, but I really have no idea. I have no idea how we got to where we got, but I'm happy we did.
First of all, this is what Jeff gets for voting out Katie when he could have gotten Penner, but he was afraid to make a bold movie. Secondly, I'm glad that Penner outlasted him, proving his irrational fear of losing to Penner was well-founded all along. Third, what a jerk he was when he got kicked out. "I might have made $16 million dollars playing baseball, but I really want this million. And it's not even a million, it's only $600,000 after Obama takes his share." Oh my god, there are so many detestable things in this statement. Jeff Kent was a baseball player well known for his teammates hating him, but you never really saw that on the show. He seemed like a nice, even-keeled guy and a good, fit competitor. But what was he all along? A rich asshole fat cat conservative who doesn't want the government taking any of his money. (He also hates gays as much as Blair does.) So, good, Jeff, I'm glad you're going home. I may hate that Abi and hate (myself for being attracted to) Pete, but I hate you the most. And not for anything you did in the game, but what you said after it. I'm still not sure why you're gone, but I'm really glad you are.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: CBS]
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You take the sick, you take the poor
You take them both and they're here for
The game of Survivor, the game of Survivor
There's a time Jeff Probst has to go and host
And tell the tribes to jump off a boat on
The game of Survivor, the game of Survivor
When the idols never seem
To be hidden right under your door
Suddenly you're finding out
The game of Survivor is actually hard (Ha-ha-ha-hard)
You have have to Outwit, Outlast, OutplayWhen you're playing the game of Survivor
Playing the game of Survivor
Playing the game of Survivo-oooooooooor!
As you might be able to tell from my awful rerendering of the Facts of Life theme song, there is only one thing I care about on the new season of Survivor, and that is Blair. Well, mere mortals and young children under the age of 30 call her Lisa Whelchel, because that is her real name. And as far as they know, she's a gay-hating Jesus freak. But the rest of us know that she played Blair in about 10 quadrillion special episodes of the most unrealistic show to star George Clooney that has nothing to do with robbing casinos.
Blair is probably the second most famous person to play the game after that guy from the Cowboys who played a couple of years ago. Jimmy something. Whatever, I don't know about sports people. Speaking of which, there's some baseball player, Jeff Kent, who is playing too. Whatever, good for him. I have no clue who he is, because he has not been on a television program beloved by millions and saved by Cloris Leachman. But, damn, this season is just lousy with famous people.
It's not just those two that are familiar faces. This season also brings back three survivors who had to be medically evacuated from the show, a twist that seemed built to bring back gay Republican villain Colton from last season but here is the first episode and there is not one, "Heeeeeeyyyyyyy," to be heard, so I don't know what's up with that. Instead we get Mike Skupin, who fell in the fire during season two; Russell Swan, who suffered from severe dehydration 2009; and Jonathan Penner, who has played twice already, but got evacuated the second time during Hero. I think this is a good twist, because those people who got medi-vaced out will always wonder what happened if they could have finished the game. But not Penner. Oh no, sorry. We know what happens when Penner plays the game uninjured, he gets voted out. That is what happens in his first season. Why does he get another chance? I know why, because Jeff Probst loves him and thinks he's good TV. More and more this game is just about the whims of Probst, like this one and future talk show host is the king and all these people are just jester's for his amusement. Sorry, Jeffy P, but not everyone agrees with you.
Alright, so everyone is on a boat and each injured survivor gets a tribe. I'm not even going to bother remember the tribe names because they are always hard to spell and pronounce and we just call them based on whatever color their buff is anyway, so I'm not even going to engage in the colonial imperialism of giving a bunch of rich mostly-white Americans the names of the indigenous people. Instead, I will call Russell's team, Team Ponytail, because everyone on that team, even the men and women with short hair, seem to have ponytails for some reason. I will call Penner's team, Team Lesbian because I can not differentiate between Dana and Carter, who look like members of some sort of Sapphic boy band and both have the frosted tips for it. The team with Blair on it is Team Blair because, obviously. And if you didn't know, that is the team we are rooting for.
So, everyone is on a boat and Probst is like, "OK, you have 30 seconds to grab as much food and as many supplies as you can and then you have to row this raft to shore." Everyone scrambles around, but then they put their crap on the raft and everything just falls into the ocean. Apples and oranges sink. Firewood bobs soggily in the waves. Chickens drown. Probst just stood there on the deck laughing at their misfortune. They were never meant to have any of this, this was just to make them jump around. Oh, his little jesters all. Dance, little jesters, dance.
Everyone paddles to shore and as soon as Team Ponytail drags their raft onto the shore, Russell says, "Just to get this out there, I don't want to be the leader. That's what happened to me last time, and I know you guys are thinking about making me the leader, but I don't want it." Everyone sort of rolls their eyes and is like, "Um, did you see that chicken drown?" Then Malcolm, a tall slab of beef took off his shirt and every admirer of the male form just stopped in their tracks and had to stare slack-jawed for a minute. Oh, that Malcolm and his his perfectly chiseled form, handsome face, and ponytail. Malcolm, I would like you to be my leader. I would let you lead me anywhere (particularly under a bush somewhere for some alone time).
As for leaders, Team Ponytail doesn't have one, but Russell sure is bossing everyone around. TP also has another hard working member: Zane. He told us at the top of the show that he has a Frankenstein tattoo and like Frankenstein, he will either give a little girl a flower or strangle you. Well, that was interesting. Everyone loves Zane and he makes an alliance with everyone on the beach and then goes up to Russell (who is not a leader) and Malcolm (who I want to be my leader) and says, "I made alliances with everyone here. But I really want to make an alliance with you." Zane is the typical player who plays too hard right out of the gate.
Speaking of which, so is Penner, who is already looking for a hidden immunity idol over at Camp Lesbian. Everyone else doesn't like him and wants to vote him out as soon as possible (including Baseball Dude, who injured himself trying to save a drowning chicken) but he doesn't care because he's gonna get an idol. He even figured out that the clue was in the bag of rice. Now he just has to find the damn thing.
Over at Team Blair, Blair is in the ocean wearing her entire outfit including her jeans. There is nothing more uncomfortable than wading in the water in soaking denim. It is less comfortable than a colonoscopy. It is less comfortable than getting punched in the face while nursing a sore tooth. It is less comfortable than the conversation Blair will one day have to have with her son when he comes out as gay. Actually, that might be more uncomfortable. Maybe. Blair isn't fitting into the tribe so well. Meanwhile her tribemates Abi (who, I believe is the actual girl from Ipanema), RC (who is named after a cola), and Pete (who is the second runner up to be my leader if and only if my current leader Malcolm can not meet his leadership duties for any reason whatsoever) are already getting an alliance together. They ask Skupin to join, because having good old Fire Hands on your alliance is a good luck charm.
Skupin tells us that this year he's "Going with the game." It's something he learned at a corporate off-site retreat right after doing trust falls. "Go with the game." He tells us once again. If they want to play slow, play slow. If they want to play fast, play fast. Wait, did he learn this at a Successories™ conference or from a How to Please Your Partner in 10 Easy Steps article from Cosmo? Whatever, that is his new philosophy: "Go with the game."
We got all your standard camp life shots about building fire, putting together a shelter, and Russell telling everyone that he's not the leader, but they should do what he says. The weird thing is that Skupin is the only one on his tribe culturally literate enough to know who Blair is and he confronts her about it. She says, "I don't want to tell people because everyone always liked Jo better and I can't deal with another blow to my self esteem. Also, my jeans are really itchy and stuck to my legs." Skupin keeps her secret. Over at Team Lesbian, someone named Dawson (who is a girl) figured out who Baseball Guy is. She's not telling anyone either. If I were Dawson, I would sell him up the creek. Get him to stand out and take the heat off you. That's how you survive week one.
They go to the challenge and each team has to split into pairs. One pair will run to get some oars. The second pair will paddle out to a giant box and then bring it back to shore, and the final pair will solve the puzzle based on the pieces in the box. Everyone breaks into pairs easily except Team Ponytail. "Now, I'm not the leader, but I suck at puzzles and rowing, so I'm going to run. With, Um. Zane. You two girls solve the puzzle." "But Russell, we suck at puzzles and we both ran track in high school." "Well, who cares. You're on puzzle duty. I'm not the leader, but you have to do this. Malcolm, you row with this lady whose name I mean to learn in the next week or so. OK. Go Team. Break!"
Yes, this means that Russell's team is going to lose and he's probably going home. Challenge, challenge, challenge, boring, boring, boring, and Team Lesbian wins by a frosted tip, after decimating Team Blair's huge lead. They come in second. They both get prizes. Jeff Probst says, "So, little jesters, what went wrong?" Russell responds, "Well, I'm not the leader, but I made the wrong decision and now we have to pay the price."
Back at camp, Russell says, "OK, everyone, put down your things and gather round. I know I'm not your leader but I have to say what happened out there today..." "Hold on one minute," Zane pipes up. "I sucked out there and I just quit smoking. You should send me home." "Well, that settles that," Russell says.
But, no, that does not settle that. Zane does not want to go home. He just wants everyone to convince him to stay and then vote out Russell and then that means that they all want him there really bad and then he will be running the game from here on out. That's what he said. Basically it's like that girl who is always like, "God, I'm so fat!" so you have to say, "No, you're not fat," to validate her when all it does is annoy you that she is trying to make you tell her she's not fat when she knows all along she's not fat. Also, this is playing too hard. The object of week one is to not be too much of a jerk or too old or too bad at challenges or not Blair and just stay in the game. Everyone would have totally voted Russell out if he kept his mouth shut.
According to his plan some blonde chirpy bird comes up to him and is like, "I like you. Stay. We'll kick out Russell." And he says, "I don't know man." On the inside he's grinning thinking his plan is working. Then Malcolm (swoon) comes up to him and says, "Look at my pecs. Aren't they perfect? Aren't they just lightly dusted with fur? Don't you want to touch them? I bet you do. Oh, and you should stay. Let's kick out Russell." And Zane says, "I don't know, I think he might have an idol." Malcolm says, "Uh oh. The beach is thattaway," and he flexes his bicep and points toward the water for no particularly good reason.
They get to tribal council and Russell says, "Well, Jeff, I'm not a leader. I'm more of a chief. Actually, I'm kind of like a dictator. I don't want to be a dictator or a chief, and I'm definitely not the leader, but...hold on, I'm speaking right now...I just keep controlling things, not because I'm a leader, but because I am an autocrat at this breakfast table and, yeah, that's it. You can talk now."
Jeff goes to count the votes and we think Russell is going to get the axe and that Zane actually pulled his stupid plan off, but, no. He did not. This was perhaps the worst, most complicated plan in Survivor history that happened week one and did not involve a hidden immunity idol. Let's break it down. Zane thought he could say he wanted to go home, then have everyone convince him to stay, then get them to vote out Russell, tell them Russell had an idol, and still convince them to keep him. Where does that make any sense? The Negative Zone? Bizarro World? Big Brother? Nowhere!
Back on the beach, Blair was waddling around in her jeans, which were starting to dry but were caked with sand. It was just everywhere, chafing around her knees and the folds where her leg meets her hip, under the waistband. Oh, this game was hard. It was harder than a sitcom, harder than defending her beliefs, harder than writing children's books. She did the one thing she could think of and knelt down to pray. "Jesus," she said. "Please help me to win this game. I can only do it through your grace. Please, dip your hand in and help me." She waited a minute in the dark night, darker than anything she had seen before but still with a faint glow, like after getting your picture taken and the flash just lingers, keeping the real world at bay. "Blair!" she heard coming out of the clouds. "Is that you, Jesus?" she asked. "Yes, it is Blair. And you don't need my grace to win. You need to make these damn people like you. Get in this game and make some friends. Otherwise they're just going to kick you out as soon as they can. Oh, and take your damn jeans off. That is just getting disgusting."
"I will," she said. "Thank you, Jesus." Yes, we all said. Thank you, Jesus.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: AP Photo]
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'Survivor' Season 25: Meet the Castaways (Including Blair From 'Facts of Life'!)
'Survivor' Winner Kim Spradlin: ‘People Were Afraid’ of Colton Cumbie

Over the past few seasons of Survivor, we've seen former castaways returning for another (and sometimes a third) shot at playing reality television's biggest game (well, its second biggest game after "What did Honey Boo Boo Just Say?"). But for the season that starts September 19, there are three cast members returning for the most legitimate reason yet. Today CBS announced the three players that would be coming back after being medically evacuated in past seasons.
Michael Skupin, who fell into the fire in Survivor: Australian Outback way back in 2001, and Russell Swan, who suffered from severe dehydration in Survivor: Samoa in 2009, will be back for another try. Sneaky Jonathan Penner is back for a third shot at a million smackeroonies. He was voted out of Survivor: Cook Islands (the "race war" season) and returned for Survivor: Fans Vs. Favorites where he was evacuated with an infected knee. All three of the men had the medics call them out during the show's sixth episode. Creepy!
But it's going to be a very different game for all of them. Skupin is now 50 and hasn't been on the show in more than a decade. Swan, who struggled physically the first time around, won't be in that much better of a position three years later, even if he drinks more water. As for Penner, he certainly has plenty of experience, but those on the show will have gotten not only one but two previews of his game play in previous seasons (though that didn't stop Rob Mariano from taking the top prize a few seasons back).
The biggest question is, "Where is Colton?" When the show announced that medically evacuated players would be returning we thought Colton Combie, the possibly racist and definitely entitled gay Southern Republican lightning rod from last season, would surely get another shot after succumbing to appendicitis last year. He was a great player (aside from his polarizing comments) and made for great TV so this twist seemed custom made to throw him back into the fold. I was so sure he'd be returning, I even called CBS to ask why he isn't returning. They haven't called me back. Let's just hope that doesn't mean Colton is gone for good.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: AP Photo]
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